These conditions, offered by the South, could not be heartily approved by the people who had just won such a decided victory on an issue involving these very conditions. Yet there was a decided wave of popular feeling in favor of peace upon any terms. Men of positive convictions and eminent in all walks of life—William H. Seward, H. B. Anthony, and Joshua R. Giddings—were now ready to purchase it at almost any price. The enthusiasm for emancipation and free soil that had so stirred the North during the presidential campaign, began to wane, and so serious a reaction set in that, for a time, it seemed likely to make barren the Republican victory. Not only so, but the mob-spirit of the ’30’s was reawakened, and Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and their supporters were assaulted on the streets of Boston. The people of the North refused to tolerate further agitation against slavery, and were desirous, in every possible way, to appease the anger of the other section. Committees were appointed to confer with representatives of the South for the purpose of obtaining a better understanding of their grievances.
Thus, while the North seemed anxious to recede from almost every position it had won in the recent election, the South was too confident of its strength and of the justice of its cause to give much encouragement to the messengers of peace from the other side. The situation just described is an interesting illustration of the characteristic difference between the people of the North and the South on every question in which the Negro was involved. The North was very reluctant to make slavery an issue; the South was always willing to be challenged on that issue. In the North, the Negro was a problem; in the South, he was property. It is always easier to deal with property than to deal with a problem. For example: In the Kansas and Nebraska controversy, the South wanted territory for slave-property, and the North wanted it as an outlet for New England emigrants. If the only question involved had been to save the black man from further enslavement, the South would very possibly have won. In other words, interest in the Negro as a human being, deserving a chance to live and grow, was not the only and perhaps not the immediate motive behind the men who fought for free soil. Slavery was fundamental and therefore, from the point of view of party politics, a dangerous issue. There were men in the North and also in the South who for conscience’ sake would like to have seen the Negro emancipated, but the nation was not yet ready for it. It involved consequences so vast and so far-reaching that the mass of the people hesitated and were afraid. In the state of the country at that time, the political parties of the North were anxious to make it appear to the South that they had little or no concern about the Negro, either as a freeman or a slave. Their great anxiety was to save the Union. Mr. Lincoln was politically wise enough to state that his administration was in no way committed to emancipation or to anything else that looked to a change in the condition of the Negro people. He would save the Union with or without slavery. He would very likely have found himself lacking in national confidence or support, had he failed to make this declaration.
When the South decided to go out of the Union, it furnished the President with the one thing needed and that was a platform on which he could unite the people of the North. When his policy was distinctly the preservation of the government, Free Soil Democrats, Abolitionists, and all believers in an undivided country, came at his call. All sentiment in favor of emancipation served only to swell the passionate appeal to the national feeling to save the Union. The Negro’s only hope was that, in this threatened conflict to preserve intact the federation of the states, his emancipation might become an inevitable necessity.
Frederick Douglass expressed this hope in the following language: “I confess to a feeling allied to satisfaction at the prospect of a conflict between the North and South. Standing outside of the pale of American humanity, denied citizenship, unable to call this land of my birth my country, and adjudged by the Supreme Court to have no rights which a white man was bound to respect, and longing for the end of bondage for my people, I was ready for any political upheaval that would bring about an end to the existing condition of things.”
CHAPTER XII
DOUGLASS’S SERVICES IN THE CIVIL WAR
The Civil War came on as the direct result of the irreconcilable sentiments of the North and the South on the question of slavery and the political conflicts already mentioned. On the part of the South, it was begun and waged with marvelous courage and intelligence to preserve slavery and to establish the right of secession; and on the part of the North, to preserve the Union, and the right of Congress to deal with slavery as a national issue. During the first two years of the war, the Federal Government did and said everything possible to convince the people of the South that the new Republican party had no intention, near or remote, of interfering with slavery. At the very beginning of hostilities, William H. Seward, Secretary of State, declared to the nations of the world that “terminate however it might, the status of no class of people of the United States would be changed by the Rebellion; that the slaves would be slaves still and that the masters would be masters still.” This policy was consistently followed in the field of military operations, as well as in the civil administration of the government.
General McClellan, Commander-in-Chief of the Union Army, early in the conflict, warned the slaves that “if any attempt was made by them to gain their freedom, it would be suppressed by an iron hand.” In many places Union soldiers were detailed to guard the plantations of Southern slave-owners. In parts of the South in possession of the Federal army, black fugitives, who had found their way into the lines, were returned to their masters by order of the commanding officers. The following is a copy of the proclamation issued by General T. W. Sherman at Port Royal in November, 1861:
“In obedience to the order of the President of these United States of America, I have landed on your shores with a small force of national troops. The dictates of duty which, under the Constitution, I owe to a great sovereign state, and to a proud and hospitable people, among whom I have passed some of the pleasantest days of my life, prompt me to proclaim that we have come among you with no feelings of personal animosity; no desire to harm your citizens, destroy your property or interfere with your lawful rights or your social and local institutions beyond what the cause herein briefly attended to, may render unavoidable.”
This proclamation is typical of those issued by General John A. Dix, General Burnside, and other Union commanders in different parts of the South. All this was in perfect accord with President Lincoln’s oft-repeated declaration, that his paramount object was to save the Union and not to save or destroy slavery. “If I could save the Union, without freeing the slaves, I would do it,” said he. “If I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.... I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
This declaration of President Lincoln was reflected in every act of every agency of his administration. It gave the cause of the Union a spirit and character wholly apart from the cause of Emancipation. It is needless to say that this attitude of the Federal government was not pleasing to the Abolitionists, and the colored people in the free-states were much disheartened. Horace Greeley voiced the impatience of this element when, in a letter of complaint to the President, he said: “Every hour of defense of slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union;” and asked, “if the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slave-holding, slavery-upholding interests, is not the perplexity and the despair of statesmen of all parties?”